Culpepper glad to shed weight of NFL lineman

By David Whitley
THE ORLANDO SENTINEL

TAMPA - A police officer pulled over Brad Culpepper's car a while back and couldn't believe what he found inside.

Was it really Brad Culpepper?

"Are you the football player?" the cop asked.

It was, only he didn't exactly match the picture of the guy on the drivers license. Forget the faulty headlight, should the cop arrest somebody for stealing about one-third of Culpepper's body?

Wherever it went, a lot of other ex-football players would be smart to follow.

Most people remember the former Leon player as Warren Sapp's sidekick on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' defensive line. He was 280 pounds of beef and bravado.

These days, he operates out of an eighth-floor office with a great view of Tampa. Culpepper is a lawyer for Morgan & Morgan, the ubiquitous personal injury law firm. Clients see the old magazine covers and action photos on the wall, and say that can't be the same chiseled guy in front of them.

"They're astonished," Culpepper said.

He retired from the NFL four years ago, then retired 80 pounds in eight months. Culpepper didn't get sick. He got smart.

"It's not how much money you make," he said. "It's who lives the longest."

That realization slowly is hitting his previous profession. The death of San Francisco lineman Thomas Herrion three weeks ago fired up the obesity debate.

Are football players super-sizing themselves to death? A certain smooth-faced attorney has become Exhibit A in the debate.

The 36-year-old Culpepper spent almost a decade gorging his way through the NFL. He didn't want to. He had to in order to keep up with the inflating bodies around him.

The same ones that statistics show are liable to develop heart disease, diabetes and be dead before they turn 53. While the players are burying themselves in Big Macs, the NFL is burying its head in the sand.

At all levels of football these days, bigger is better. The NFL acknowledges there's a hugeness issue but says it needs more study. The league's medical expert was even on ESPN last week saying we need to define "obesity."

How about when a guy looks like he just ate Orson Welles?

"These are grown men. If they want to retire and weigh 400 pounds, that's their choice," Culpepper said. "Roll over and be dead. But I think it's sad."

Fifteen years ago, 39 players on NFL rosters exceeded 300 pounds. At the start of training camps this year, there were 552.

There have always been behemoths, but even football players aren't naturally designed to weigh as much as the average Subaru. That usually leads to one assumption.

There are steroids in the tank.

"I dabbled a little bit in college," said Culpepper, who graduated from Florida in 1992. "But by me saying that, I swear to God, I never did it in the NFL. You can't."

It's not that players wouldn't because some obviously do. But Culpepper said the NFL's policy dissuades most players from trying to juice up.

Testing personnel used to knock on his door at 6 a.m. to collect a sample. It always would come back negative for steroids. If there were penalties for cholesterol levels, however, Culpepper would have been kicked out of the league.

His daily regimen was big breakfast, midmorning snack, lunch, midafternoon snack, home for dinner. Then before bed, "I'd run for the border," he said. A few tacos or a Wendy's double would serve as a nightcap. Culpepper was lucky to play in a Tony Dungy defense, which stressed quickness over size. That changed when he went to the Chicago Bears, who had Friday night weigh-ins.

"They thought you might be too light if you were playing a big team," Culpepper said.

He was supposed to be at least 275. He missed it once and had to sit out. Incensed, Culpepper started showing up at weigh-ins with a couple of 5-pound weights hidden in his underwear.

"I had to wear a T-shirt to hide the bulge in my pants," he said.

Culpepper played the last 10 games of the season, all of them without the weights in his jockstrap. Then he retired, never intending to become two-thirds the man he used to be.

The first 30 or so pounds just evaporated. Then he started running and eating a more healthy diet. Before he knew it, he was under 200 pounds, his waist size had gone from 42 to 33, and he was running a marathon.

The downside is Culpepper had to toss out two full wardrobes. The upside is he no longer needs two Excedrin PMs to sleep at night, his arthritic left knee doesn't constantly ache and he enjoys that forgotten feeling of actually being hungry.

Oh yeah, he should also live long enough to at least see his three kids graduate from college.

Herrion never will. There's no indication what killed him,, but he was listed at 315 pounds and probably weighed at least 15 pounds more.

The issue only is going to grow because it hardly starts in the NFL. Teenagers hardly can get recruited to college nowadays unless they weigh 280 pounds.

"Maybe it's totally unrelated to the size issue, but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody dropped dead in the middle of a game," Culpepper said. "Especially with the heat. Your heart can only pump so much stuff."

Even if nobody drops dead, you don't have to be Jenny Craig to know obesity leads to long-term problems. The NFL should at least educate the players on the risks.

"They're still convincing guys that they're fit at 340 pounds," Culpepper said.

They think they're just running for the border.

In reality, they're running for the coroner.